SOCIAL HISTORY AND SSM: George McAllister

Here's a question that I haven't seen discussed a lot in "official" sources; forgive me if I take advantage of a
concentration of informed readers to ask it.

I have a hobby-level interest in social history, particularly the history of the family and sexuality. In any even casual reading on the topic, the first thing one notices is that families have varied wildly over time and geography, with sometimes astonishing variations in structure, extramarital relationships, ease of marriage and divorce, incest, and so on. To borrow a phrase found in many intro to sociology textbooks, there is no "the family."

My question is, does this have significant implications for the problem of SSM? To get started: Opponents of SSM frequently cite contemporary research that indicates that our current ideal nuclear family is quite good for both children and adults. Be that as it may, it is also true that other family structures, often radically different, have served quite well in other cultures. The Sumerians invented civilization while allowing a man to sell his wives and children into slavery to pay off debts; ancient Athens laid the groundwork for Western civilization while zestily engaging in extramarital sex (including, by our standards, homosexual pedophilia); China is one of the grandest civilizations on Earth despite a variety of family arrangements in its history. In short, it seems that humans can prosper gloriously under an array of family arrangements and despite changes in those arrangements.

So I'll provide the point, and hope for the counterpoint:
History and anthropology prove that there is no single best family arrangement. Any account of the possible effects of SSM has to deal with the demonstrated fact that as society changes families change with it, and vice versa, usually without grandly evil effects. Opponents of SSM need to demonstrate that SSM is an exception to this rule. Ideas?
posted by Eve at 10:31 PM VOTE

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